We've covered several examples of services that help online consumers stay in touch with their offline friends, including Postful, PeggyMail and Presto. Zeroing in on photos, Picwing now offers a service that automatically sends prints of consumers' photos to their loved ones once or twice a month.
Users of San Francisco-based Picwing begin by giving the service the names and addresses of the people they'd like their photos to be sent to on a regular basis, along with how often. Then, as they take photos they'd like to share, they either email them to their personal @picwing.com address, or they simply upload them. At that point there's nothing more the user need do; Picwing takes over and automatically prints out the latest bunch of photos, sending them to the recipients the user requested. Prints are made on 4-by-6-inch glossy Kodak paper, and a personal message can be added to the back of each. Picwing offers unlimited storage, privacy settings and automatic backup; international shipping is available. Prints can be purchased at 19 cents each; alternatively, flat-rate plans begin at USD 4.95 per month for 15 prints to a single recipient.
Also available are widgets to synchronize with Chumby devices and create slideshows on the web. All the world may seem to be online, but there are still plenty of opportunities keeping those who aren't in the figurative loop. How can your brand help smooth the OFF=ON and ON=OFF connections...?
Website: www.picwing.com
Contact: support@picwing.com
Spotted by: Florent Lesauvage
On a sidenote: when it launched as a Y Combinator startup last summer, Picwing was selling a different product/service—a wifi-enabled smart frame. As Techcrunch noted at the time, the frame's price was probably too high. Picwing currently lists the frames as sold out, and states that it's looking for a production partner—presumably one that will be able to lower costs. Meanwhile, kudos to Picwing for changing course in midstream to keep their company moving forward.
I just read a related quote: "You see again and again the companies that succeed are not the ones that have the brilliant strategy, but the ones that course-correct along the way." ( Scott D. Anthony in a New York Times piece titled "The Long, Long Road From Idea to Success": http://nytimes.com/2009/07/05/technology/start-ups/05essay.html )
Thanks for the write up and comments. Our course correction was a difficult decision for us, but one that we feel was correct for our company.